Jeffrey Rosen, who served as acting attorney general at the end of the Trump administration, cited “ground rules” in refusing to tell lawmakers whether former President Donald Trump asked him for help in overturning the 2020 election results.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia representing the state’s 11th Congressional District, grilled Rosen on the topic during testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. Specifically, the congressman asked Rosen if Trump pressed him or the department “to take any action at the department to advance election fraud claims or to seek to overturn any part of the 2020 election results.”
“I cannot tell you, consistent with my obligations today, about private conversations with the president one way or the other,” Rosen said.
Pressed by Connolly, who said there was no “executive privilege” invoked preventing him from speaking about the matter, Rosen insisted he was being forthcoming with regard to the “facts” he had at the Justice Department but declined to talk about his conversations with Trump.
“When you ask me about communications with the president, I, as a lawyer, don’t get to make the decision on whether I can reveal private conversations on that? Other people make that decision, and I have been asked today to stick to within the ground rules that I have to abide by,” he added.
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Rosen later testified that a meeting at the White House on Jan. 3 was not about a rally scheduled for Jan. 6, at which Trump pushed claims about a stolen election, which was the same day rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers met to certify President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
However, Rosen refused to “talk about the substance of what the meeting was about.”
Despite the former acting attorney general’s refusal to provide specific details about his conversations with the former president, Rosen did distance himself from the claims that Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election.
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“During my tenure, DOJ maintained the position publicly announced previously that the department had been presented with no evidence of widespread voter fraud at a scale sufficient to change the outcome of the 2020 election, that it would not participate in any campaign’s or political party’s legal challenges to the certification of the Electoral College votes, and that there would be an orderly and peaceful transfer of power under the Constitution,” he said in opening remarks.
Election officials, including members of his own administration, have said the 2020 election was secure and have dismissed allegations of widespread fraud. Trump and his allies filed a litany of lawsuits challenging results across the country, most of which have been rejected by the courts.
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